Hiding Within The Vine

Sometimes when life is loud you move through it differently than you would in the deep silence of another season, one less full.  I like reading things from a bunch of people out there in the world who maintain a site called 'The Art of Simple', and of course it's because they're interested in simplicity.  Like me.  We live in a really complicated world, and the older I get, the more I see with real depth and clarity, that I like things simple.

Prosaic Mosaic

Spring is the time of year when I am humbled as a teacher.  Also just as a person, but it goes to teaching first.  I feel it keenly every year, and now I just expect it.  I am tired.   I am being simplistic.  I am streamlining things.  I am thinking about priorities, and not trying to control too much.  But there is still a lot to do.

There are a lot of things I could write right about now which would, what, somehow prove that I'm busy and really feeling it...?  But I don't want to.  Half of me says I chose teaching, so own it.  Another half says that you don't do this to people unless they're your people.  (And they've already been hearing from me this week.)   Meanwhile, I am doing my best. 

Every year though I discover again in this feeling of ratty humanity that God is artful in how He designed us.  We're wretched and vile and don't have very many manners and sometimes we're just tired.  A few weeks ago I heard the term 'human sandpaper' and it rang in my ears.  It has not left.  Even the students, when they hear a loud noise now, comment on it.   People have short fuses.  In this, I realized that it makes us still, thank you God, long for and hope for something beyond ourselves.  How relieving that it is not just about us.  

Short Speak

Today is....


The Head and the Heart and The Killers
grading
a conversation with  my mom
coffee
the smell of spring
classic awkward traffic in Stillwater, Minnesota
(why?...always?....never before have I seen so many angry decision makers on small quiet roads...)
deadlines
more deadlines
intentional smiling, the real kind, when your eyes crinkle

Furiously Loved in A Tangled, Redeemed Place

"Beauty. Redemption. Miracles. Wholeness. Healing. Renewal. Friendship. Conversation. Prayer. Worship. Work. Music. Art. Justice. Jubilee. Mercy. Love. Sex. Aging. All redeemed.

I want to see the light and I want to see the trees. I want to learn to see them both, moving quickly, stirring with the wind of the Spirit.  I think the Kingdom is more poetry to bear and live into throughout our life, than dictionary definitions to memorize or boundaries to place. Go for a drive, go for a walk, look up and fill your eyes with the Kingdom already come."


This comes from Sarah Bessey who is current inspiration in my life.  When I read Sarah Bessey, it feels like the things I think about (and wanted to say) magically floated through space and time and landed somewhere else far away.  I like Sarah Bessey's words because she is refreshing in the age of reason in which we currently find ourselves.  I become reminded to inhabit my life, to breathe the words I speak fully, and to let the Spirit of God inhabit my life too.

Careworn Little Heart

"The Ragamuffin Gospel....is not for the super spiritual....is not for the fearless or the tearless....

The Ragamuffin Gospel was written for the bedraggled, beat up and burnt-out.....it is for the sorely burdened who are still shifting the heavy suitcase from one hand to another....it is for the poor, weak, sinful men and women with hereditary faults and limited talents...."

I took little parts of the forward of Brennan Manning's book, wrote them out, and put them on my desk.  For moments like this.  Right here, right now when the words would feel profound for my careworn little heart.  

Fine Tuned Old Soul Things

Spring always surprises me, probably because I love it so much, and it is so fleeting.  It's short and intense at school, but at home, it is slow and still.  It draws me back to favorite things of life (and ever the introspection) like November does. But I'm busier now, and so today when I woke up, everything was weird, weird weird.  Seasons are changing again, and I'm a fine tuned person.  (If I have learned anything personal in my 20s with more clarity, it is this.)  But maybe spring feels different this year, or still unconnected to me despite the fact that it is April, because I have moved. 

Vaporous

It is the kind of day where I am running on fumes.  My comrade in teaching just let me dig through her drawer for tea or coffee or something, and when I found instant coffee (very bold, definitely old) from Starbucks, I felt like I hit the jackpot.  I poured hot water into this cup and the whole classroom filled up with the promising aroma of coffee. 

I imagined the steam swirling all around (like I'm Pocahontas in a Disney movie) and I could breathe and pray again.  And then I went to the computer and heard the clickety clack of the letters on the keyboard as I typed, and I didn't feel so rattled anymore.   

So now the confessions emerge.